The murder in Trincomalee town of veteran Tamil leader
Arunachalam Thangathurai, a lady school principal, Rajeswari Thanabalasingam,
along with several others either killed or injured, shows once more that the
killers did not have the slightest concern for the Tamil people. The killing
which shattered any sense of complacency in Trincomalee town, would, appropriately
enough, bring about an abhorrence of violence, a profound feeling of grief and
loss, and an irreparable sense of the drift among Tamils everywhere. But sadly,
in the present legacy of politics conducted by insinuation, assassination and
character destruction in which the Tamils are trapped, it may be another non-event,
another signpost in the communitys long and self-inflicted death-march.

When the LTTE murdered Amirthalingam and Yogeswaran
in 1989, a significant number of Tamil expatriates who were associating with
the group stopped their association. Some months later the sense of loss was
largely forgotten. Having listened to so many rationalisations they decided
either that death was somehow deserved, or that the boys had now realised their
mistake. But there was in fact no mistake.

Some years ago, a conversation with the late N.Sabaratnam
turned on the subject of political killings in Jaffna that had taken a large
toll by 1986. He pointed out that there was widespread grief when Alfred Duraiappah
was murdered in 1975, and his funeral had occasioned about the largest public
turnout the city had ever witnessed. Mr.Sabaratnam then observed that we had
been too complacent about the political drift that came to terms with what the
murder represented. Mr.Sabaratnam was a natural leader in the community, who
followed a distinguished career as principal of Jaffna Hindu College with several
years as editorial writer of the daily Ealanadu. His editorials
were sober and well-received. His press was blown up in January 1988 following
an editorial plea for the implementation of the Indo-Lanka Accord, and against
getting into opportunistic talks with the government of the day, It was another
indication that no independent discussion by Tamils about their own future would
be tolerated.

The
meaning of the drift

What was not clear in 1975 ought to have become
clear as the years went by. It was a struggle by an ideology that could realise
power only by pushing to an extremity the insecurity of the Tamils. It is this
insecurity that could provide the human bombs and the destructive power to brutalise
the enemy, and drive them to further acts of repression and mindless
violence, thus providing the setting for the legitimacy of the ideology and
its acquisition of power. Such politics obviously needs the total suppression
of the free thought and free expression, for it could never satisfy ordinary
human longings for stability, freedom and dignity.

Responses

Tamils with some freedom to act were faced with
two possible responses. One was to confront the ideology of death, for which
the price was very heavy. The tragic story of dissent within the Tamil community,
with hundreds of instances of exemplary heroism, remains unwritten. The other
was to either escape or adopt an escapist frame of mind - to live with an emigrant
mentality, distancing oneself from responsibility for the land and its people.
This also meant cutting adrift an essential part of ones humanity, leading
to a degradation of the intellect and taking on board a good deal of hypocrisy.
To give an example of the escapist mentality, many Tamils who have had the good
fortune to establish themselves in urban centres like Colombo or Trincomalee
town, away from the war-zone, credit the LTTE for their relative security. They
feel that in these places they are left largely untroubled by the Sinhalese
and the armed forces to walk with their heads held high, because of the LTTE
fighting in the field.

This also means performing the amazing mental contortion
of interpreting the Central Bank and the train bomb blasts in Colombo last year,
as done to enhance the security and dignity of Tamils in that city. It also
means failing to take responsibility for, or even to understand, the tragedy
of rural Tamil youth coerced by circumstances into turning themselves into suicide
bombers - indeed they are often told that the Tamils in Colombo must be taught
a lesson! It seldom occurs to them to give credit to the good moral sense among
a large section of the Sinhalese for their security, amidst calculated provocations
to let loose the bestial.

Again many Tamils who get away from the situation in
this country to better educational and career opportunities for their children,
feel comfortable about supporting an ideology that systematically seeks to deny
Tamil children here, even that little which a poor country could afford. Anyone
who works to improve the quality of life for Tamils, particularly in the rural
areas, is challenging the ideology of war and destruction - for the latter requires
these Tamils to be kept alienated and insecure. Thus anyone who tries to give
them better schools, hospitals, transport and challenges violations by the security
forces, becomes a traitor to this cause. Little wonder then that those trying
to make government assisted reconstruction and rehabilitation meaningful had
been threatened.

Trincomalee District of which Mr. Thangathurai was a
member of parliament, is a microcosm of the larger drama being played within
the Tamil community. There is Trincomalee town, largely secure, with good schools
and infrastructure, a sizeable middle-class and where real estate is booming.
Also very visible there is a sub-urban proletariat of refugees from the war,
living in camps and critically dependent on government rations, neglected children
with little hope, and families literally going to pieces. They are a segment
of the population from Trincomalees abandoned Tamil villages, now scattered
all the way from Mullaitivu to Madhu and South India.

Thangathurai,
the mature statesman

Thangathurai clearly saw that if Tamils are to have
a future in this country as a people with a culture and identity of their own,
their rural life must be revived, rehabilitated and reinvigorated. He saw that
the plight of the refugee population was becoming increasingly hopeless by
the day and was determined to carry through the rehabilitation of the district
with special emphasis on the villages. He felt that the government was adequately
co-operative in this respect, but found the LTTEs stand to be unreasonable.
Thangathurai knew that the larger long term questions are going to be decided
by the strength of the Tamil community on the ground, and not in urban seminar
rooms and negotiating fora. The initial thrust of his effort was to provide
every village with a decent school, a hospital, with basic infrastructure such
as roads and water, thus creating conditions for a return of the refugees. He
was encouraged by the results in the Thampalakamam area.

There were charges that he was neglecting the town area.
This he felt to be grossly unfair and often found townsfolk too complacent and
insensitive to the depth of the Tamil problem and the plight of the rural villages.

Thangathutrai firmly believed that the future well-being
of the Tamils in the East depended on good will and co-operation between the
Tamil, Muslim and the Sinhalese communities. He counted the late M.L.A.Majeed,
SLFP MP for Kinniya as a close friend. Majeeds murder by the LTTE in 1988
had left Thangathurai crestfallen. What contributed to his success as an MP
in pushing through rehabilitation was his non-confrontational style and an ability
to maintain excellent personal relations with parliamentary colleagues.

In his outlook Thangathurai remained a very rural
man. Thus conversation with him often proved an enlightening experience. He
judged officials by their sympathy and sincerity towards ordinary rural folk.
He had a fulsome word of praise for Sinhalese officials who worked energetically
for the upliftment of disadvantaged Tamil villages such as Ichchilampattai.
At the same time he was extremely critical of Tamil officials who found excuses
for their inaction by blaming the government, while failing to use the powers
at their disposal towards helping people. Something he felt proud of having
done as District Development Council Chairman in 1981, was to have constructed
an access road for a long neglected Sinhalese village in Gomarankadawela.

Thangathurai
& the Militant Dilemma

To discern what made him tick, we also need to understand
the militant side of his early political life. Thangathurai hailed from the
very old Tamil village of Killiveddy, deep in the rural hinterland of Mutur(Cottiar)
Division, along the bank of Allai tank. His father was a rural registrar. He
was in the Irrigation Department before he took to politics as a member of the
Federal Party and qualified as a lawyer. His area became embroiled in communal
tensions following the introduction of the Allai scheme in the 1950s and the
settlement of Sinhalese. But communalism had no place in his heart. Thangathutai
had a deep appreciation of the Sinhalese farmer who toiled for his living as
did the Tamil farmer. Relations with the Sinhalese at Dehiwatte, especially,
had been close. They came into Killiveddy to buy produce such as curd, and also
to his father to register family events. It is also significant that following
the Armys Kumarapuram massacre of February 1996, crucial information
about its execution and the complicity of the colonel-in-charge was supplied
to him by Sinhalese from Dehiwatte.

In his early political life, it was natural for
Thangathurai to become active in the Federal Party that was raising concern
about state sponsored colonisation. This phenomenon was making the local population
increasingly insecure. His own village of Killiveddy was a focal point. In the
70s Thangathurai and Yogeswaran acquired a reputation for being the young militants
in the Federal Party. With a view to counter demographic manipulation by the
State, Thangathurais own family, particularly he and his younger brother
Kumarathurai, became involved in establishing settlements of Tamils to secure
border areas. They went through difficult times in the area with Thangathurai
facing arrest during the 70s.

The worst came after the July 1983 violence. In
January 1984 Kumarathurai was arrested in a general tightening of state repression.
He was taken to Boosa and tortured, though no charges were made. But Thangathurai
remained in Trincomalee. May 1985 was a period of heightened tension in the
area with attacks and counter-attacks of a communal nature by the Sri Lankan
forces and the Tamil militant groups. On the night of 30.5.85 a police party
entered Killveddy south bank and abducted 36 Tamil civilians, including women,
who were killed and burnt. The following morning, the army came to the main
village and shot dead mostly 8 elderly persons who had not already fled. The
incident received world-wide publicity after Thangathurai spoke about it to
the correspondent of the London Times in Trincomalee. ( During the same period
about 18 Sinhalese civilians in Dehiwatte were killed in Tamil militant attacks.)
At this point Thangathurai was forced to flee the country to India when National
Security Minister, Mr.Athulathmudali, ordered his arrest for `spreading false
rumours. Kumarathurai was released in 1986 only to find that his village
had ceased to exist. He sought refuge in Denmark.

Despite such experiences Thangathurai was led to question
the nationalism of the Federal Party articulated by the Jaffna middle class,
which laid emphasis on `rights first as legally defined. Its MPs were
enjoined to boycott ministerial visits, and the Party was shy of exercising
ministerial power even when supporting a government in parliament. This was
fine for the North, but in the plural environment in the East, it meant the
Tamil community becoming progressively backward, bitter and neglected, while
others received state patronage. As an MP in the 70s, he told the Party that
it was meaningless for him to be an MP if he refused to do business with ministers.
He once told me jokingly, those in Jaffna can understand `rights, but
not roads, tanks, channels and bridges.

Furthermore, he had lived with Sinhalese, knew them
as human beings, and a large number of Sinhalese were among his constituents.
Even out of office, I have witnessed his former Sinhalese constituents from
Kantalai seek out his services. He also knew that a purist Tamil nationalism
was not calculated to win friends. He related a moving experience where he was
approached by migrant fisher-folk from Negombo. They told him, Sir, our
mother tongue is Tamil , but the Roman Catholic Church deprived us of worship
in Tamil and forced our children to receive their education in Sinhalese. Now,
your people and your officials too reject us. Please give our children places
in your schools.

Thangathurai was thus never driven to the position that
one cannot live with the Sinhalese. This sentiment dominated the North, where
people saw mainly the Sinhalese police and the Sinhalese army. Thangathurai
saw the cracks and the humanity behind what Northerners beheld as the monolith
of the Sri Lankan state.

Moreover, the South itself had its own share of troubles,
a harrowing militancy and the mood among the Sinhalese towards the ethnic question
was also changing. The State was clearly not immovable. With all this experience
behind him and considering the plight of the Eastern Tamils, Thangathurai decided
that what was relevant today was not militant rhetoric in politics echoed from
Colombo, but reconstruction and rehabilitation of the refugees. To this end
he gave himself single-mindedly. His style remained that of simplicity and Spartan
dedication.

I have attempted to sketch those qualities which made
Thangathurai unique among Tamil leaders today, and who in his own way tried
to deflect the march of death.

Our
Responsibility

A brand of politics that sees a need to assassinate
men like Thangathurai, as it did silence those like N.Sabaratmam, is also one
that refused to learn from experience. Most of those so destroyed or silenced
are men and women whom we had much to learn from, so that the community would
remain alive and healthy. Such politics could only countenance blank or perverted
minds. Should we not at least now express our outrage for our own sake?

I have deliberately written in a pessimistic vein. But
these are urgent questions to which answers need to be found.